On 8/14/05, drd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <drd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I am interested too.
>
> The misconception that most of us have is that Go is a single game.
>
I don't agree that this is a misconception. In practice it is a single
game. The difference in the rules mostly concern how to count the
score. It is a very rare case where the difference in rules leads to
different play or a different outcome of the game. This goes so far
that there are professional players who have played using one set of
rules all their life can participate in a tournament with a different
rule set and not know the difference until the game ends.
It's almost like saying soccer would be a different game when it
requires to give the referee a bow when he whistles for the end of the
game.
> In fact, it is a class of games with similar rules. The Go community (in
> general) has no real desire to fix this (and probably doesn't consider it
> broken.)
You have to realise the game has been played for thousands of years.
During this time customs have evolved towards efficiency in the case
that two humans are playing. Efficiency meaning the players have to
spend as little time as necessary in the boring part of determining
the score.
Only with the very recent arrival of computers and computer-players do
we realise how complicated and imprecise those customs are. And
computers are still so dumb that they can't really cope with anything
but the simplest definition of the game like the Tromp/Taylor rules. I
would go one step further to say that even the Tromp/Taylor rules are
too complicated to implement for most. But to expect those old customs
to change overnight because of this and ignore the customs and culture
that resulted from many centuries of game-play is asking too much.
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